International Permafrost Association Country Reports

Kazakhstan

The Kazakhstan Alpine Permafrost Laboratory continued monitoring of the thermal regime of permafrost, seasonally frozen ground and dynamics of solifluction processes, kurums and rock glaciers in the Northern Tien Shan near Almaty.

During the summer 2000 the laboratory has investigated the geocryological conditions on the southern and eastern slopes of the Transili Alatau Range in the basin of Chong-Kemin River between 3000-3600 m asl. Also in the summer 2000 the laboratory carried out monitoring of the movement and investigations of the structure of the Gorodetsky rock glacier in the basin of the Bolshaya Almatinka River, Transili Alatau Range. The laboratory in 2000 investigated permafrost in burial mounds, in natural conditions and in cryogenic forms in the Altai Mountains, basin of Buhtarma River, where solifluction forms, ploughing blocks, thufurs, kurums and very large relict cryoplanation terraces exist. Studies of the Late and Middle Pleistocene glaciation also were performed here.

A book entitled ‘Permafrost is the keeper of the antiquities’ by A. Gorbunov, Z. Zamashev and E. Seversky was published in Russian, with an abstract in English. Staff of the Kazakhstan Alpine Permafrost Laboratory continue investigating climate, permafrost and ground ice evolution in the Tien Shan supported by the National Geographic Society of the United States of America.